It seemed like only a few days after the Quidditch match – and Ron's unexpected elevation to the main team, which had meant he'd been part of a cup winning team which by one point of view had four Weasleys on it – that the exams were suddenly not something that was coming but something that was happening tomorrow morning.

"I hope I'm ready," Hermione fretted, checking her exam timetable. "This is going to be such a pain..."

Harry had a look, and blinked.

"Wow."

"What's that?" Ron asked, leaning around to see himself. "Blimey, they're really not ready for anyone to be bloody minded enough to do all twelve subjects, are they?"

Harry counted under his breath. "Hermione, even if you can use your time turner for this you're going to be doing twelve hours of exams in one day."

"Twelve what?" Neville repeated, startled.

"Oh, fine, you have a look as well," Hermione advised them, and turned it around.

Neville picked it up, compared it to his own exam timetable, and frowned. "Hermione, you've got Arithmancy and Transfiguration at the same time tomorrow morning. I've got those subjects… how does that make any sense? How are they going to have you do the Arithmancy paper without you being able to tell me what the questions are?"

"I wouldn't do that!" Hermione replied, shocked.

"You've got to admit it's possible someone would, though," Ron pointed out. "Like, if… this is going to sound unlikely, but if Crabbe was doing all the subjects then he could tell Malfoy what's in some of them."

"I think Vincent could be doing all twelve subjects, come to think of it," Harry mused. "I don't think you have to do well at all of them to be allowed to take all of them."

He shrugged a wing. "I mean, he's not, but he could be."

"Would that be treated as being really Slytherin?" Dean asked. "And would that earn you more points or have them taken off?"

"Sadly, Professor McGonagall doesn't think that being particularly like your House is a good reason to get points, let alone exam marks," George volunteered. "That's a lesson my esteemed twin and I have learned well."

"Shouldn't you two be revising for your OWLs?" Hermione asked, taking her timetable back. "They're the most important exams you can take."

"Well, we already know what we're going to do once we leave school," George told her, scribbling something on a piece of parchment. "We've already got Padfoot interested in funding us."

Hermione paused, then turned back to her friends. "Should I be impressed they already have jobs lined up or annoyed that they're using it as a reason not to do well on their exams?"

"I think it's a joke shop," Harry opined. "Sirius mentioned that once."

"We're actually quite good at magic, you know," Fred noted. "We just don't test well."

"I do," Lee Jordan commented, shuffling what looked to Harry like History Of Magic notes.

"We're hoping there's an extra credit bit on the Transfiguration OWL," George agreed. "Hey, Harry, look at this."

He lobbed something to Harry, who caught it and looked at it.

"It says it's a smoke bomb," he observed, reading it off, and turned it around until he found the little rope fuse leading out the top.

"Try it!" Fred urged. "It doesn't last long, and you'll all be fine."

"We're trying to get ready for our exams," Neville pointed out. "I'm still not sure I've got everything ready for the Transfiguration."

Harry thought about it, then blew a little spark on the fuse and rolled it towards the table Fred and George were at.

"Hey, wait-" George yelped, before the bomb went off.

There was a sudden whoosh of thick white smoke, which lasted four seconds, and when it faded all three Fifth-Years at the table had extravagant wooden pipes clenched in their teeth.

Fred took the stem of his pipe out of his mouth. "We've tried it already, you know," he said, gesturing with the pipe, then blew a smoke square. "Mmm, this one's peppermint."

"Orange for me," George supplied, and pinched his nose and blew hard. Long curling spirals of smoke rose from his ears towards the ceiling.

Lee Jordan took a deep pull on his own pipe, and produced a figure-of-eight out of smoke before putting the pipe down on the table next to them. "After two years of dealing with those Slytherins, you'd think you two would be a bit more ready for that sort of thing."

"Expecting it with Slytherins is one thing," Fred grumbled, smoke oozing from his nostrils and forming a neat grid pattern. "But from fellow Gryffindors? It's just not cricket."

"You don't play cricket," Dean pointed out. "You'd probably be good at it, though."

"Transfiguration!" Hermione insisted. "And Arithmancy, and – do you have Charms or Runes tomorrow afternoon?"

"Charms," Ron answered, checking his own timetable. "I really think they could organize the exams here better."

"Maybe they do two versions of the elective papers?" Harry asked. "That seems like it would be the simpler option."

"That does make more sense," Ron admitted. "But doesn't that mean it doesn't matter if Hermione tells us what's on her Runes paper?"

"It might be cheating," Hermione judged. "Besides, I'll have my own exams to revise for."

"You're the one with the time machine," Neville pointed out. "Actually, what rules do you have for that?"

Hermione ticked off on her fingers. "Only use it for school work. Don't tell everyone about it, as much as possible anyway. Make very sure you don't run into yourself. And… don't give it to Fred or George Weasley."

"Those do all sound pretty sensible to me," Ron said, to general agreement. "Except for how you're using a time machine to help with school work, anyway."

"Transfiguration!" Hermione repeated, louder this time. "What are Gamp's laws?"

"You can't Transfigure food unless it's for Harry," Dean answered promptly. "That's one of them."

Hermione opened her mouth to object, thought about it, and closed her mouth.

"That's one," she agreed instead.

Even though his own exams were important, Harry couldn't resist looking across the hall during the first of their written exams – Transfiguration – to see how people like Tanisis and the Barlos sisters were getting on with the new way of taking part in the exams.

It looked like they'd been allowed to use their typewriters, which was nice to know – it wouldn't have seemed fair otherwise – and Tanisis didn't look too upset. Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail were even talking to one another, though Harry couldn't hear a word of it and he wondered if they'd been put under some sort of charm to make sure they couldn't be heard by anyone else.

It seemed like the fairest thing to do, really. It was simply impossible for any of them to go anywhere without the others, and besides they were sort of all taking the exam, so in a way it was like they were being tested together on the theory bits. The practical was more the sort of thing you could test one at a time (or two at a time if it involved actual magic).

Satisfied with that, Harry focused all his attention on his own paper.

At least the bit about the Laws of Transfiguration was easy, and the bit about how they weren't all quite the same sorts of laws was fairly easy too – you didn't have to explain why they were different, just how they were different. Like how you couldn't transfigure food or gold, but you could duplicate food if you had some of it already while duplicating gold simply couldn't be done without a Philosopher's Stone.

Harry did think it was a good thing he'd stayed interested in magic so long, though. It always seemed much easier to do an exam question if it was the sort of thing you were interested in, because then you were talking about something you liked.

After the Transfiguration paper came the Charms paper, and after that there was the theory bit of Defence Against the Dark Arts – which was all about all sorts of dangerous Dark Creatures which you could theoretically run into (like Lethifolds) but which were too dangerous to actually demonstrate (like Lethifolds).

After revising about Lethifolds Harry was very glad indeed to have his Patronus mastered. They sounded like dreadful things, and the fact that most spells didn't get rid of them was really sort of scary. (And scary in a different way than most people were scared of dragons.)

Wondering about that, and resisting the urge to chew on his quill, Harry moved on from Lethifolds to the extravagantly dangerous Nundu.

Nundu were another of those Beasts which were 'at least it's not a Lethifold', as far as Harry was concerned. It sounded like it would be quite difficult for someone to vanish without trace because of a Nundu, because you'd be too busy running around in circles with the hundred or so other witches and wizards trying to make it go away.

As fast as possible.

Harry's three elective subjects were all new to him, naturally, and each one was different.

First was Arithmancy (which, like Runes and History of Magic, only had a theory paper), which was a bit like a Key Stage Two Maths paper at level 6 but with harder and more varied questions.

It actually did look a lot like Professor Vector had used a Muggle maths paper as the starting point, because instead of a list of questions you had to write on labelled pieces of parchment there was a booklet with separate questions and places to fill in your answers. That meant there was a page of graph questions about translating, enlarging, rotating and reflecting a shape, and then there was a page about algebra where you had to work out what X was.

Harry kind of liked this way of doing things, though it did make him wonder how easy Tanisis would find it to actually write down the answers for these ones. That was sort of a problem with Arithmancy in general for her and the others who used typewriters, come to think of it, and it didn't seem fair that she might have to not do a subject because it would be harder to do without being able to write on paper.

You could do a nine on a typewriter, but doing long division was almost impossible – and graphs were right out.

In fact, it seemed like the same kind of problem might happen with Runes, once Harry was doing that exam instead. Runes used, well, runes (which weren't on any typewriter Harry had seen) and even their first exam was about decomposing and recomposing runic phrases. Most of the exam was spent either taking a short rune phrase and translating it into English, including some of the meanings of the runes, or taking an English phrase and translating it into runes.

That second one meant that you had to do at least two translations and explain one of the reasons one of them was better. It was probably a good way to show that they'd been learning the meanings of the runes, but by the end of it Harry was really hoping that they got to take a dictionary into the exams next year.

Care of Magical Creatures was the oddest of all.

There was no theory paper whatsoever, at least not in third year. Instead, they all gathered together by the shore of the Black Lake, and one by one Professor Kettleburn called them over behind a copse of trees to a hippogriff paddock.

For most of Harry's classmates, that meant first bowing to them, then giving them a pat, and for full marks even going for a fly. Not everyone did, and some of the ones who did sounded like they really regretted it – Lavender Brown had taken off in a cloud of shrieks before getting a bit more relaxed by the time she landed again – but there was one thing that Harry wondered all the way through the wait.

"Professor?" he asked, as it finally came to his turn. "Is it okay to ask why hippogriffs stay in the paddock?"

"It's not part of the exam, so I could certainly tell you!" Professor Kettleburn chuckled. "If I knew why, of course – it's a bit of a mystery. It's just how hippogriffs are kept, though there's two ideas about it."

Harry approached one of the hippogriffs – a big grey one with orange eyes – and stared at it, before bowing.

"The first idea," Professor Kettleburn went on, "is that it's just that that's where the food is, and they know that – sort of like professors, I might say! But the second idea is that hippogriffs were magically created from horses and eagles, and the first wizards who did it treated them like horses because that's where they came from – and found that they have a very convenient tendency to stay in a paddock! Bit of a conundrum, isn't it?"

The grey hippogriff had bowed back while Professor Kettleburn was talking, and Harry approached to give him a pat.

"I won't be asking you to ride him, don't worry," the teacher added. "I don't think he'd take kindly to it, and it might be unfair to you!"

Since the alternative seemed sort of unfair on everyone else, Harry said he'd just go up for a fly with the hippogriff instead. That went mostly well, except for the bit where the hippogriff wasn't very good at following traffic laws and they nearly had a collision, and as Harry landed Professor Kettleburn gave him a nod.

"Fine work, Harry!" he said. "And what would you give him as a reward?"

Harry frowned for a moment. "Rabbits?"

That turned out to be an 'Excellent' answer, and Harry was released back to the castle to get some quick revision in before the next exam.

For most of the rest of Harry's exams, he knew the sort of thing he was getting into on the Practical exams. Charms was about, well, casting a Charm, and he was sure nobody would be surprised that in Transfiguration they were Transfiguring something, while Potions was making a Potion. (Harry did sometimes wonder if one year Professor Snape would just have them prepare twenty ingredients properly, but no sign of that so far.)

The Defence Against the Dark Arts practical, however, was something entirely different. Remus had been careful not to give Harry any clues, so when they arrived at the scheduled exam place and time and saw Sirius was the one standing there he was as surprised as anyone.

It was also a little odd that Sirius was standing next to a wooden wall with a door in it, set up in the middle of a field in the grounds.

"All right, everyone," Sirius said. "Hello to those who haven't met me, by the way, I'm Sirius Black. Your Defence professor has asked me to help organize this part of the exam, because I wasn't very busy and I couldn't make up an excuse quickly enough when he asked."

He pointed to the door. "You'll be going through there one by one, and making your way to the other end of the course. We're doing it like this so it's not much easier for anyone who's not going first."

Seamus put up his hand. "Mr. Black? Two questions."

"Blimey, two questions?" Sirius repeated. "Well, don't take all day, it's harder for Professor Lupin to mark if he has paws and that's scheduled for this evening."

"Well… first question, isn't it more realistic if the rest of us get to see what happens?" Seamus shrugged. "If we're dealing with a dragon or something – no offence, Harry – then the first poor sod who gets barbecued is a warning to the others, isn't he?"

"An excellent argument," Sirius agreed. "But this is an exam. What's your other question?"

"Well…" Seamus hesitated. "Me Mam says you bribed your way out of prison. Is that true?"

"If I was going to resort to bribery I'd have done it years earlier," Sirius told him with a severe look. "On an unrelated note, you're going first. If you do get barbecued, make sure to shout it very loudly so you're a warning to others."

There were a few sounds from over the wooden wall as one student after another went through the course, but nothing that really gave Harry much of a clue about what was going on. Then it was his turn, and he took a deep breath before going through.

To his surprise, when Sirius had said 'course' he meant obstacle course. There was a big Muggle paddling pool about three feet deep and covered with water lilies and pondweed, then a sort of potholed area, some marshy stuff and finally something that looked a lot like a trunk (next to Remus, Dean and Neville – Lavender was walking off up to the castle with her friends, so it looked like Dean and Neville were going to wait until all five of their group had finished.)

Taking a moment to Charm his clothes with the water-repelling charm, Harry splashed into the pool. It was just about the right depth that he could swim instead of wading, but he wasn't more than halfway across when some long, thin arms grabbed around his neck and tried as hard as they could to strangle him.

The arms didn't do very well, but it was still enough of a clue to Harry that there was at least one Grindylow in the pool. He stopped for a moment, rearing up so he could get his hind legs on the floor of the pool and free his forepaws, and carefully levered the Grindylow off his neck before casting a Stupefying Charm on it and dropping it back in the water.

From there it was a quick bound to get out of the pool, and Harry moved on to the next bit.

The potholes turned out to have Red Caps in them, which was more or less what Harry had expected, and he was able to show off a bit by casting spells with his wand (held in his tail) and with his breath (which, naturally, came from his mouth). Then the marshy bit was in a sort of dip in the land, so he couldn't actually see which way Remus was, but Harry just ignored the Hinkypunk until the spirit looked quite put out by the whole situation.

It might have been resigned by this point instead, though. Harry wasn't very good at reading the emotions of a creature made mostly of smoke.

"All right, Harry," Remus said, when Harry came over the crest and saw him. "If you can just go into the trunk, that's the last part of the exam. It's expanded on the inside, don't worry."

Harry did so, opening the top and walking down the stairs, and cast the Wand-Lighting Charm to get a bit more light. (He used his wand. He'd sometimes thought about casting that spell with his breath, but it seemed like being able to light things up by breathing fire was sort of redundant.)

After a few seconds, a rippling black shape came out of the darkness.

Startled by the sudden appearance of a Lethifold – which was much more dangerous than anything else in the exam – Harry quickly reminded himself of one of his happy moments and cast his Patronus. Ruth's silver form flew out and knocked straight into the Lethifold, sending it flying back into the wall, and then Harry realized something.

This wasn't a Lethifold at all. It was-

"Riddikulus!" he incanted, and the rippling black sheet changed into a brightly coloured patchwork quilt. It was much too big and plump to float menacingly around, either, and thumped to the floor with a soft clothy sound.

Poking it with his foot for a moment, Harry decided that that probably meant he'd sorted it out, and headed back up the stairs.

As he went, he wondered why it was that Boggarts changed like that.

Maybe it was because, if you'd dealt with a fear, your fear became different? Or your worst fear did, anyway.

"Well done, Harry," Remus told him. "Full marks."

Harry hadn't quite been expecting full marks, and he smiled happily.

"What did you get for your Boggart?" Neville asked. "Was it the same as last time?"

"No, I got a Lethifold," Harry replied. "I was thinking about them earlier this week, maybe that's why?"

"I got The Thing again," Dean admitted. "I still think it's really creepy."

"Actually, how did you two do?" Harry asked.

"We should watch Ron," Neville pointed out, and Harry turned around so he could see.

Their friend was just reaching the paddling pool, and while they couldn't see quite what was happening Harry in particular could hear some distant sloshing – then Ron shouted a spell, and lilac flames went everywhere.

"I did something like that," Neville said. "Not for the Grindylow, though, for the Hinkypunk."

"You didn't need to, mate," Dean chuckled.

"Why not?" Harry asked, curious, as Ron clambered damply out of the paddling pool and started on the section with the Red Caps.

"He did the whole of the course with that big metal bar in one hand," Dean explained, and Neville lifted it slightly from his side to show where it was. "The Red Caps took one look and stayed away… and so did the Grindylow… and I think the Hinkypunk, too."

"I still had to make a path to tell me where to go in the swampy bit," Neville clarified. "I thought I might get lost, so I drew a fire path while I could still see where Professor Lupin was."

"That's clever," Harry told him, impressed. "I did think about flying, but I thought it might not really be in the spirit of the exam."

"I should have thought of that," Dean admitted. "I flew over the swamp bit, Professor Lupin did take some marks off for that because I didn't show I could actually deal with the Hinkypunk. Still got a pretty good score, though."

He pointed at about where Ron was. "See that scorch mark? That was me – whoops!"

The Red Caps had made their move, and three of them came up to Ron from all directions. Ron's first move was to levitate one of their clubs, then pick it up himself and throw it into the distance.

Another one of the unpleasant little fae swung, and Ron Stunned it so that by the time the club actually reached him it just bounced off his leg without enough force to do any damage. That left the third, and Ron stepped back hastily from it before Disarming it.

"Incendio," he incanted, and a blast of flame knocked over the next Red Cap to emerge from one of the potholes.

"I think that means he's doing pretty well?" Neville suggested. "Okay, so the Hinkypunk bit is next..."

Ron was in the marsh for at least five minutes, which got Harry a bit worried, and eventually he loped to the side a bit (so he wouldn't spoil the test) and took off to check on his friend.

It turned out that Ron was waist-deep in the muck, having for some reason decided that the smoky spirit with the lantern was an excellent guide, and eventually had to change into Nutkin to unstuck himself. That meant getting extremely muddy, about as badly as you normally got after repeated Quidditch crash-landings in a rainstorm, and Ron finally sloshed into the trunk for a minute before coming back out again and lying down on the grass.

"I feel kind of stupid now," he muttered. "And tired."

"There's only one exam left," Dean reassured him.

Ron jolted upright. "There is? What?"

"I don't think there's one left, is there?" Harry asked. "You did Muggle Studies yesterday, right?"

"Yeah, the practical was showing we knew how to wire a plug," Neville answered for them both.

"Oh, yeah, that's right, none of you have Divination," Dean remembered. "So that means you're done with exams, Ron – that's even better."

"Thank Merlin," Ron groaned, then shifted a little so he could watch. "Who's next? I think there were only Sally and Hermione left."

Hermione duly went next, and first dealt with the Grindylow with a Shield Charm – none of them could see it, but Harry heard her cast it with confidence and it seemed to have worked well enough.

She even took the time to dry herself off, then when she moved on to the Red Caps she just cast Stupefy over and over again.

"Not very inventive, is it?" Dean asked.

"Hey, whatever works," Ron shrugged.

Dean spread his hands. "I'm not saying it's not working, just… you know, that's Hermione, she's forgotten more spells than we know."

"I don't think that makes sense," Harry frowned. "If we'd all learned the same number of spells, and I remembered two but someone else only remembered one, then they'd have forgotten more spells than I knew. But Hermione just remembers all the spells we get taught and reads about lots more as well."

"...huh," Dean said, as their friend reached the swampy bit. "I never thought about it like that."

It took Hermione almost no time at all to get through the swamp bit, and she clambered into the trunk with confidence.

"Wonder if hers has changed," Neville said.

There was a long pause, and then the trunk rocked from side to side.

"That doesn't seem like Professor McGonagall," Dean pointed out. "Or Hermione."

Another tremble, then there was a terrible snarl, and the lid burst open. Some kind of creepy yellow-and-white skeleton held together with bits of rusty wire came stumbling out, nearly falling over itself as it tried to get away as fast as possible.

A blur of feathers and claws and teeth came out after it, chasing it down, and Dean started laughing. The skeleton jolted, tripping, then exploded in a cloud of smoke.

"Miss Granger?" Remus asked. "Are you all right?"

The blur stopped moving, skidding to a halt and revealing itself to be Clever Girl. The dinosaur in question suddenly looked embarrassed, then reverted to Hermione.

"Sorry, Professor," she said. "I've always been kind of creeped out by the model skeleton in my dad's office, and I… panicked."

"Don't apologize, that was amazing!" Ron contributed.

"It was quite impressive," Remus agreed. "But I will have to take a few marks off, because that's not how you're meant to deal with a Boggart and it wouldn't work on most of them."

He rubbed his chin. "And now I'll have to see if Argus can get me another one in the next five minutes..."

"That was rubbish," Ron said, an hour or so after lunch.

Everyone with muddy clothes had gone up and got washed and changed, and now they (or, rather, Ron, Neville and Harry, plus a few of Harry's friends from the lower years) were sitting on one of the slopes leading down to the Black Lake.

"I thought it was a pretty good test," Neville replied. "The Hinkypunk was kind of fun."

"You had the same sort of test as us, then," Tanisis observed, licking the back of her paw. "What other creatures did you have?"

"Grindylow, Red Caps and a Boggart," Neville listed off.

"We didn't have Red Caps," Tyler shrugged. "We had fairies."

"They were really annoying," Anna groaned. "They look so much like they're going to be easy to catch, but apparently that's 'not really what you're supposed to do' and 'wouldn't set a good example'."

Tyler rolled his eyes. "If you'd had enough breakfast..."

Anna stuck her tongue out.

"No, I don't mean it was rubbish because of that," Ron retorted. "It's rubbish because Hermione should have got full marks. It got rid of the Boggart."

"I can sort of see what Remus meant," Harry said, shrugging his wings a bit. "I wasn't really sure if I did well enough to get full marks, but if what you're supposed to do is not panic then Hermione did sort of panic. She just panicked in the same way you did, Nev."

"I heard about this," Tanisis said. "You told us about it, I think, Harry."

Harry nodded in confirmation, and the sphinx chuckled.

"For most things, hitting them very hard works," she said. "You just need to know about the exceptions."

"I still don't think that was quite right," Ron said stubbornly, but then shrugged. "I suppose Hermione's probably going to get more than ninety percent anyway, though."

He sniggered. "Maybe that means someone will do better than her at a subject. You might, Harry, you did great at Defence last year. What did you get?"

"I don't really remember the exact numbers," Harry admitted.

He stretched, flexing his wings and letting them catch the afternoon sunlight. "Anyone feel like going for a fly?"

"After the training Wood gave us before the exams?" Ginny asked, groaning. "I think it's another few days before I can stand to look at a broom."

"Speak for yourself, Gin," Ron countered. "I want to use this one last week when we can fly around a big area without getting seen by Muggles."

"That is a good point," Ginny admitted, pushing herself upright a bit and thinking about it.

"We should probably wait for Dean, though," Neville pointed out. "And if we're going to go flying with as many people as possible, we should wait for the Twins to be done with their OWLs and Percy with his NEWTs. It might be Percy's last chance to fly as well."

He frowned. "Or maybe not. Herons aren't rare, are they?"

"They're not extinct," Harry said, thinking about the Swallows and Amazons books. There'd been an endangered bird in one of them – a Great Northern – but a heron had appeared once or twice, hadn't it? And it hadn't been endangered then.

On the other paw, those books were quite old.

"I might need to check a Muggle reference book," he added. "But I don't think most Muggles would be surprised to see a heron. It's much less surprising than someone on a broomstick."

Ron snorted suddenly.

"Hermione would be really disappointed with us," he explained. "We're planning on spending the time until we get our results not worrying about what they are."

"I'm a bit worried," Tanisis volunteered. "It's the first year with the typewriters, and I made a few typing mistakes – I hope it's obvious what I meant."

"It's better than the quill, though," June said, which got an emphatic nod from her feline friend. "At least with the typewriter I knew I could get all my thoughts on the paper."

"Blimey, maybe I need a typewriter," Ron suggested. "If it's that much faster."

"I don't think it is," Harry said. "Or that's not why, anyway. It's more that using quills June and Tanisis – and Tiobald and the triplets – are way slower than we are."

"It's kind of unfair your paws work so well for writing, if you think about it," Tyler butted in. "Hey, Anna, show him."

Anna sighed, and flowed smoothly into the form of a fox.

Picking up his sister, Tyler waited while she squirmed around to hold out her forepaw.

"No thumb," he explained, tapping each of the toes, then the little dewclaw. "Except this thing, and it's no good for writing."

Anna jumped out of his arms and went back to her human-shape. "Thanks, Anna," she said, sarcastically. "You're my favourite sister, Anna."

"I wouldn't go that far," Tyler retorted.

Harry snorted, remembering that as it happened Tyler and Anna didn't have another sister, then inspected his own paws.

He couldn't remember if mouse paws (or rat paws) looked sort of like his, but if they were then it probably meant that at least some of Redwall made sense – or at least the bits where it was the mice writing books. As far as the Redwall books were realistic at all.

Did Nora have the same sort of paws as him, or paws more like the ones the Smiths had? Harry supposed that with a big enough typewriter she could write anyway, and wondered if maybe he or Hagrid could teach her to read – it wasn't really something Empress could teach.

That made him think about how they still needed to test if Empress could teach other dragons how to speak, but that thought was interrupted by a mournful howl drifting out of the Forbidden Forest.

"What was that?" Neville asked. "The moon's not risen yet, that can't be Professor Lupin..."

June had sat bolt upright, and she howled in reply – a spine-chilling and loud sound from so close.

"Ow!" Ron yelped, putting both hands on his ears and nearly slipping over to land on one of Harry's wings. "What was that?"

"Trouble," June answered, ears flattening. "That was my whole family – they're in danger."

As soon as he heard what June said, Harry turned. He paused for a moment, trying to work out which direction the howling had come from, then decided he couldn't wait any longer and raised his wings for a downstroke.

Ron yelped, and then Harry was in the air. He gained height quickly, pushing himself up so he was above the nearby trees, then switched to flying as hard as he could towards the Forbidden Forest.

There was another howl, closer this time, and Harry adjusted slightly to make sure he was pointed right at the sound.

Glancing back behind him with a quick turn of his head – deliberately not doing it enough to throw him off course – Harry saw a sleek black panther loping along the ground after him, along with June and Tanisis and two red foxes a little further back. Ginny was just coming over the lip of the ground around the lake, probably because she didn't have any way of taking on a four-legged sprint, and Harry couldn't tell where Ron was at all.

The time it had taken to check had brought Harry near the tree line, and he angled up slightly before another powerful wingbeat to keep him moving forwards and over the scattered trees that were sort of 'not technically the Forbidden Forest yet'.

A few seconds later, Harry saw a centaur canter into view before skidding to a stop by one of the big oaks. It was a big stallion, not one of the ones he'd met before, and he had one of the same sort of giant longbows as Firenze did. It creaked audibly as he drew the bowstring tight, and then loosed an arrow back into the forest.

A dozen Wargs ran past the stallion, one of the older ones Harry had met once before and what looked like all of their youngsters, and Harry caught sight of other Wargs backing away from the forest with their hackles raised and growling steadily. There were other centaurs as well, some of them young foals and others armed with spears and bows and even one with a long staff.

It was only then, as he backwinged to try and work out what was going on, that Harry saw what they were all facing.

Spiders. Giant spiders, easily as big as the largest ones from The Hobbit – so large that Harry now had a new idea of what Shelob would be like – and moving forwards like a many-legged black carpet.

There was a squeaky gasp from right by Harry's shoulder, and he went a bit lower before starting to hover next to Ronan.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"The spiders attacked us," Ronan replied shortly. "I know not why."

They were getting closer, and Harry remembered vaguely that giant spiders – Acromantula, that was it – could understand human speech.

"Stop!" he shouted, then inhaled. "Ignis Verberaque!"

What came out of his muzzle was a great jet of flame, more like a rope than a whip, and it curled around before landing in a kind of barrier between the acromantulas and the other denizens of the forest.

Landing with a thud, Harry was about to try something else when he felt a tickling sensation down his wing. He looked, and saw Nutkin scurry along before dropping to the ground and turning into Ron.

"This is literally worse than my Boggart," Ron said faintly.

"Begone!" called the big centaur Harry didn't know. "Return to your nest, spiders. We will destroy you if you come closer."

Ronan sighed, almost too softly for Harry to hear. "Bane..."

The spiders had halted at the line of fire, which was gradually expanding as it burned through the leaf litter. Then one of them chittered something in a language Harry didn't understand, and almost all of them burst into motion again.

They cleared Harry's fire line in a second, and there was a whoosh-thud as two of the centaur stallions and one mare loosed arrows from their giant bows. Ron had his wand out and cast a Stunning Spell, which knocked his target acromantula back but didn't seem to actually knock it out, and Harry spat out another jet of fire before taking off again.

Ron grabbed onto Harry's tail with his free hand and shifted back to squirrel, clearly deciding that being run down by a charge of several dozen giant spiders was a little too Gryffindor. The centaurs began backing away, one of June's parents charged in and bit at a spider leg, and then Harry couldn't quite see what was going on.

He banked around to get a better look, and June's father was on the ground with a spider pinning him down. Lapcat arrived in a blur of black fur, cannoning into the acromantula and sending them both rolling across the ground, and then Neville shifted back to human and shouted an Incendio.

Deciding not to try magic again, Harry went diving down for extra speed and spat a blast of flame at one of the acromantula. It went down with a crash, knocked over by the impact and probably hurt by the flame as well, and Harry pulled up – dodging around a tree – before turning around, trying to find somewhere he could help out in an increasingly chaotic battle.

June's wand was in her paws, and she and Tanisis cast stunning spells on one of the acromantula at the same time. It slowed for a moment, knocked slightly dizzy by being hit by two spells at once, and then got pounced on by one of the older wargs and knocked flat over.

Another one waved its legs around, trying to do something as flickering blue-and-white fire arced from leg to leg. More bluish fire came flying from Taira and Anna, currently in fox-form and prudently hiding behind Firenze, and Harry realized it had to be some kind of kitsune magic he'd just never encountered before.

Then Harry saw Bane again, his bow snagged by a length of silk from one of the acromantula and bitten in half by another. The centaur kicked out, sending a spider flying six feet to crash into a tree, but that left him overextended and another two knocked him to the floor.

Harry dropped low, pulling up just above the leaf litter so he could attack the spiders without hitting Bane, and blew the strongest blast of fire breath he'd ever managed. It roared out and hit both of the spiders, blasting them into the air and away from Bane, but as Harry began to pull up another spider launched itself at him and landed on his wing.

Knocked off course, Harry crash-skidded through the leaves and managed to end up sort of upright. One of the acromantula tried to bite him, broke its teeth on his hide, and then a Flipendo jinx hit it hard enough to knock it away from him.

Glancing up, Harry saw it had come from Ron – now about twenty feet up in an oak tree, having jumped off Harry while in squirrel-form – but before he could either say thank you or take off more spiders descended on him.

Growling deep in his throat, Harry exhaled a long torrent of flame towards some of the acromantula swarming on him. The first one he hit staggered back, legs on fire and waving, and another slammed two legs down on his head to drive it towards the floor.

That worked for a moment, and Harry's fire breath crisped some of the grass and began baking the mud beneath it before he coughed and had to take a breath. Then Ron sent another jet of light towards Harry and his opponents, this time one which Harry didn't recognize at first but which made all eight of the acromantula's legs stick together and sent the big spider toppling over.

"Get off Harry!" a familiar voice shouted, and a jet of intense flame washed just overhead. Harry felt suddenly quite warm, even though he hadn't actually been hit, and it seemed like one of the acromantula who'd been holding him down had just vanished entirely in the flash of fire.

Nora shot overhead, wings booming, and pulled up into a graceful wingover before blasting another torrent of flame down at the giant spiders. Two more took direct hits, leaving little more than a curl of greasy smoke, and Harry heard the rest of them chittering urgently to one another.

He wasn't sure what they were saying, but he had a feeling that Nora was more than they'd bargained for.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Harry yanked his wings forcibly back out from underneath the acromantula who'd been pinning him down, and jumped straight into the air. Two of the giant spiders seized his tail in their jaws, pulling him back down as he fought to gain altitude, but Neville blurred into Lapcat and pounced directly on top of one of them.

The other took two glancing arrow hits on the carapace, not far from the eyes, and let go of Harry. He climbed straight up once the weight was removed, reaching the height of the tops of the trees, then spotted that there was an acromantula climbing up the very tree Ron had chosen to hide in.

"Incendio Pila!" Harry incanted, spitting a ball of bright orange fire at the spider, and scored a direct hit. The flames engulfed his target for a moment, and when they faded there was a big sooty scorch mark on its caparace and the tree was on fire.

Harry was worried about whether the acromantula was going to keep climbing or not, but then June and Tanisis both cast Stunners at it and it fell drunkenly off the tree trunk.

"Can I get a lift, mate?" Ron asked, then shifted to Nutkin and ran along one of the tree branches. Harry flitted over to pick him up, then turned to see what was going on and stared.

Ginny had arrived as well, and she was sending a bizarre hex Harry didn't know at some of the spiders. He wasn't sure what it was doing to them, either, but it looked unpleasant.

That was the least of it, though. The centaurs had all gathered together around the prone form of Ronan, who looked badly wounded, and half of them were bloody from wounds. They were surrounded by most of the adult wargs – and even as he watched, Neville blurred from panther form to human form long enough to levitate June's mother out of the clutches of two acromantula.

As another of the giant spiders lunged for him, he shifted smoothly back to panther and dodged away from the attack. Going back to human for long enough for a second levitation charm, he stopped her from hitting the ground too hard, then escorted her out of the area of the fight.

Nora made another pass, scouring a line between the defenders and the spiders – like the one Harry had made, but four feet wide and issuing forth a great cloud of smoke.

There was a momentary lull, though so much fire had been going around in the fight that there was already a dull crackling roar underlying everything.

Harry wondered for a moment if there was more help coming, then his paw dove into his pocket and he took his wand out.

He'd been so stupid!

"Expecto Patronum," he said, trying to concentrate on a happy memory. "Expecto Patronum!"

The second time it worked, and Harry told Ruth what to do before he'd even properly formed. "There's a fight going on at the edge of the forest – acromantulas!"

Even the few seconds it took to say that was long enough that the acromantula came to a decision, and they began to charge again. All the bow-armed centaurs drew back their arrows, wands went up, and then there was a sharp crack.

The fires vanished as if someone had turned them off at a wall switch, and so did the smoke. Nora had been about to dive, but she stopped and pulled up again to hover – and the acromantulas stopped as well.

One of the centaur's arrows was loosed, perhaps by accident, and before it was halfway it turned into an odd brown-and-steel bird which hovered in the air.

Professor Dumbledore walked over towards it, extending his arm, and the bird alighted on it.

"Good afternoon," he said pleasantly. "I do hope someone knows what's going on here, because I was in the middle of quite an excellent cup of tea."

It was almost an odd thing to think about Professor Dumbledore – who'd been nothing but pleasant for Harry's whole time at Hogwarts – but it was now that Harry could really see why it was that Tom Riddle had been outright scared of Dumbledore.

It wasn't that he was angry, really – Dumbledore seemed more sad than anything, even though he was polite and courteous and smiling. It was partly just how good he was at magic, because Harry was now at the point he felt like he knew how hard what Dumbledore had just done was, and partly that he was completely pleasant and well mannered at the same time.

Harry sort of knew what it was like when people met someone like Gandalf or Belgarath, now.

"The weird thing about this is that we missed being there because of Divination," Dean said, after Harry had finished describing how Dumbledore arrived. "Did I get around to telling you the weird thing that happened in Divination?"

"Don't think so, mate," Ron replied. "Except for the Professor predicting you were going to die all the time."

"No, this was in the exam," Dean clarified. "I'll tell you guys in a bit. What happened next?"

"Not very much," Neville replied, frowning. "Some of the spiders did speak English, but a lot of the talking happened in Acromantulaish or whatever it is. Professor Dumbledore speaks it."

"It seems like he speaks everything," Ron sniggered. "Except Dragonish."

"I think Hagrid said he'd asked to learn it," Harry volunteered, thinking about what he did know about why the acromantula had attacked.

Professor Dumbledore had told him that the colony had been nervous for the last two years. Something about how spiders and snakes were mortal enemies, and that they'd been able to tell that Empress was moving about the castle more – which had led to more patrols, which had led to the acromantula being more threatening to the forest's other inhabitants, which in turn had resulted in the food shortages June had been complaining about and why all the centaurs had been going around armed.

"The headmaster said that that wasn't all the acromantula," Harry supplied. "It was just this group who were the most hot headed, I think."

"I hope the rest of them are much more private," Ron said, shivering. "What's going to happen to those ones? I don't think I was close enough to hear this bit."

"They're going to a protected bit of rainforest in Borneo, I think," Harry frowned. He was fairly clear on most of the details, but that wasn't the same as being completely certain. "And Dumbledore's going to go and speak to the rest of them, to make sure they know to mind their manners."

He shrugged his wings. "I suppose they've been there for several decades and nobody's been hurt until now, so they're sort of… doing better than wizards?"

"Got a point there," Dean admitted.

"I kind of feel bad that we weren't there," Hermione said, squeezing the fingers of her right hand together with her left. "That sounds terrible."

Ron nodded slightly. "Yeah."

"Is there a reason we couldn't be?" Dean asked. "With that time turner thing you've got?"

"Oh, no, I couldn't," Hermione said, shaking her head. "None of them saw anything that even hinted that we were there. So we mustn't have, so we can't."

"I feel like we need Doctor Streetmentioner's book of time travel tenses," Harry said, then shook his head when everyone – even Hermione – gave him an odd look. "Sorry, just something I remembered from the Hitch-Hiker's Guide."

"Anyway, that thing I was going to mention," Dean resumed. "So our exam was about using a crystal ball, and I've got to admit I was proper naff at it. Unless the weather forecast for tomorrow is fog, anyway."

It was a little thing, but Harry found it so funny he almost fell over laughing. Ron did the same, and Neville trembled for a moment before shifting into Lapcat and starting to cough-purr.

"I hope our theory exam counts for more than our practical," Hermione said, as everyone else recovered.

"Well, maybe you just don't remember something that happened in your exam?" Dean suggested. "Because I was halfway through trying to come up with a way to make fog interesting, when Professor Trelawney sat bolt upright and started saying something really weird."

He looked up slightly. "It was, um… Soon, the webs of the Amazon will come.

Relentless they will seem, then the wood will kindle.

The fire will stick, and all will see the truth.

The webs of the Amazon are coming to the west."

"Hold on, hold on," Ron said, as soon as Dean stopped reciting. "Your exam was before we had this big fight, right?"

"Think so," Dean guessed. "I didn't look at my watch. But she'd been in there for ages anyway, so she couldn't know – and then she didn't remember what had just happened."

"Blimey," Ron summarized. "An actual prophecy."

Hermione nodded, a little reluctantly. "I've heard that proper prophecies have the person giving them not remember what actually happened. They're supposed to record prophecies in the Ministry, though I don't know anything about how it's done."

She frowned. "The only odd thing is that Acromantula are from Borneo, not Brazil."

"That's only where they started, though, isn't it?" Neville asked, now back to human shape. "So maybe these ones were from Brazil, or something. It's not like every single Sphinx is from Egypt."

"Or every human from Kenya," Harry contributed.

"Honestly, though, she could have made that prediction a few days earlier," Hermione grumbled. "What's the point of a prophecy if it's about something that happens at almost exactly the same time?"

"Well, I predict I'm going to have to head off soon to make sure I can change Remus back," Harry added, looking at the clock. "With wolfsbane it's okay, but he's probably got loads of marking to do."

"So long as he gives Hermione good marks," Ron muttered.

AN:

Oops I accidentally a fight scene.